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Luke 15:

15:1 Now all the publicans and sinners were drawing near unto him to hear him. 2And both the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. 3And he spake unto them this parable, saying

11 And He said, “A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ And he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be in need. And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.” ’ And he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ And they began to be merry.”

The first two stories, about the sheep and the coin, emphasize God as the seeker, the one who finds and the one who rejoices. But the third story looks not so much at the divine side, but at the human side sin, repentance, recovery and rejection.

Verse 7, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents

Jesus receiving sinners and eating with them. Jesus is the seeking heart of God going out after sinners and seeking our repentance. We must repent.

All of Luke 15 is spoken as an answer to the accusation of the Pharisees and the scribes in verse 2 that Jesus “receives sinners and eats with them.” Verse 1 says that “all the tax-gatherers and sinners were coming near to him to listen to him.”

And Jesus was making a place for them at his table and encouraging them to stay and eat with him.

Luke uses this word “receive” it means “eagerly await or expect and look for.” Jesus is not just receiving sinners; he is looking for them and eagerly awaiting their coming. He has his eye out for them.

So the Pharisees and scribes accuse him. And all the rest of the chapter is Jesus’ explanation to them of what is really happening when he welcomes sinners and eats with them.

The first answer in verses 3–7 is that his receiving sinners is like a shepherd who finds a lost sheep and celebrates with all his friends.

The second answer in verses 8–10 is that his receiving sinners is like a woman who finds a lost coin and celebrates with all her friends.

And in both answers Jesus leaves no doubt about what he means, because in verses 7 and 10 he tells the Pharisees that the lost sheep and the lost coin represent lost sinners, and the being found represents repentance, and the celebration is what God and all the angels are doing in heaven.

And at that moment some get it and some don’t. He is saying: I welcome sinners because I am the incarnation of God’s love pursuing the lost. I am the shepherd seeking the sheep. I am the woman seeking her coin. And this meal that we are eating together is a little bit of what is happening in heaven right now, and a foretaste of the joy that is coming. When sinners turn from their sin and accept my fellowship as the joy of their lives, they have come home to God. And God is glad.

A Selfish Lost Son

In a culture where honor was so important, in a culture based upon a Ten Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother,” this had been embellished and improved on where honoring your father was like at the top of the list of social life.

I will have it my way.

Any son who made such a breath-taking outrageous request from a healthy father probably is understood by everyone to be wishing his father was dead. You see, the way it worked, you never got your inheritance until your father died.

And his request: “Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.” Give it to me. He uses the word estate. This is a word used only here, nowhere else in the New Testament, and it means the goods, the property, the portion. He’s asking for the material stuff, land, animals, buildings, whatever of the family possessions he is entitled to get.

So with the word inheritance comes responsibility, accountability for the future. He didn’t want any of that, so he didn’t use that word., I don’t want anything for the future. I’m not taking on any responsibility for this family now or ever again. I don’t want to care for anyone. I just want my stuff. No leadership, no responsibility

The younger son is the picture of a irreligious person. The sinner has no relationship to God whatsoever. Doesn’t love God, doesn’t care about God, wants nothing to do with God

And so they both received their portions, this was rare.

So the father basically has no relationship with either son. These are two kinds of people who have no relationship with God. One is irreligious and one is religious. One is as far away from God that he can get. The other is as close as he can be.

The Irresponsible Free Spirit

And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

The word “loose” means a “wild, abandoned, reckless” manner. Sin always feels free for a season.
verse 14: Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be in need. Easy come easy go. And then reality, famine. Where do you think that came from?

Verse 15: And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

When we break our attachment with God, you will end up attached to another, and that attachment will be slavery not sonship.

Verse 16: And he was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him.

Gentile land would be distant country. Any country outside Israel is Gentile land.

Where’s the older son in this? Why doesn’t he ever rise to the defense of the father’s honor?

It’s a totally dysfunctional family, a loving generous father who’s provided massive gifts to two sons. One is a flagrant rebellious irreligious sinner, the other is a religious one who stayed home but neither of them has any relationship to the father or to each other. They both hate each other and the father.

Obviously this young son represents open sinners, those who make no pretense of faith in God, no pretense of love for God.

This is those in verse 1, this is the tax gatherers and the sinners, the outcasts, the irreligious. And they run as far as they can from God because they have no love for Him and no relationship with Him.

He was so hungry that he was not just feeding pigs and earning wages, he was trying to eat their food and battle them for it.

Sin is rebellion against God the Father. It is not rebellion so much against His Law, it is more rebellion against His relationship.

The Son’s Repentance

Now at this point, the father reenters the story, the father reenters in the mind of the son.

How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger?” And this is where repentance really begins, it begins with an accurate assessment of your condition.

Now hired men were not slaves. Slaves lived in the family. They weren’t necessarily paid wages, typically they were just supported.

Hired men were lower than that. They had nobody continually caring for them. They were out on their own at the lowest of the low. But they received wages and those wages, believe me, were given at the

Well, he’s ready, He’s broken, He’s alone, He’s sad, He’s penitent, He has nowhere to go. And he believes in his father. This is a picture of one whose repentance leads to salvation because, you see, not only repentance here but faith in his father.

First, he comes to himself, When you are alienated from God, you are always alienated from yourself.

The second part of repentance is humble brokenness and a deep sense of unworthiness before God.

The third part of repentance is that we cast ourselves on God’s free, merciful, bountiful provision of grace.

At this point many people make a terrible mistake in the way they try to come home to God.

Verse 20, “So he got up, came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”

Pharisees and scribes would expect that he had to be justifiably shamed before everybody as part of the retribution for the shame he had brought upon his father.

All the rabbis taught that repentance was work a man does to earn God’s favor when he feels sorry for his sin. That’s what repentance was, you feel sorry for your sin, you want to be restored to God so you do work and by that work you gain favor with God by making restitution.

The Love and Grace of the Father

While he was still a long way of, he hadn’t reached the entrance to the village, down some dusty road way out of town, a long way off, his father sees him which is an indication that the father is seeking,

He wants to reach his son before his son reaches the village. He not only wants to initiate the reconciliation as the shepherd did when he found the sheep and the woman when she found the coin, but he wants not just to initiate the reconciliation, he wants to get to his son before his son gets to the village. He wants to protect him from the shame.

Middle Eastern noblemen don’t run. That’s just basic. Exposure of the legs was considered shameful. The robes themselves reached to the ground to make sure this didn’t happen. A quaint ruling for the Sabbath states that if a bird crawls under your robes on the Sabbath, you may not catch it.”

You didn’t run because you move in a graceful stately manner.. This word “ran” is the word for sprinting in a race.

So what is he doing? He’s running through town bringing shame on himself, shame on himself, taking the abuse. His desire is to get to the son before the son gets to the village because as soon as that son enters that village, he’s going to be mocked and scorned and heaped upon with shame and ridicule.

So what do we learn about the father, who is the picture of God the father?

The father really is God in Christ, coming down from heaven to the dust of our towns to seek and save the lost sinner who comes to Him.

Some people think that God is a reluctant Savior.

This is the kiss of affection repeated and repeated. He’s ready to kiss his Father’s feet, but His Father is kissing his head. This is a gesture in the culture of acceptance, friendship, love, forgiveness, restoration

This is radical stuff, totally unorthodox, absolutely unexpected, and this is where the story has its huge surprise. The father condescends, humbles himself out of this deep love for this son, comes all the way down from his house to the dirt of the village, runs through bearing the scorn himself.

There is not a long process of restoration by works and ceremony, it’s an instantaneous thing, quickly, right now all the privileges, get the best robe.

Put a ring on his finger. The rings weren’t just for looks, they were used to stamp in soft wax the family symbol on official documents. This is authority, to act in behalf of the father.

Put shoes on him. Slaves and hired men and the poor didn’t wear shoes. Shoes were for people who had responsibility. Give him dignity, give him authority, give him responsibility. He has my dignity, he has my authority and he has a share in my responsibility. This is full sonship.

Grace gives to us when we come the full dignity of God as we are clothed with his own righteousness,

The Prodigal’s Older Brother

“His older son was in the field and when he came and approached the house …”

He knew he had no relationship with him either. He hated his father also. He was alienated from his father also. He just stayed around the house but he had zero relationship to his father, that’s why he didn’t defend his father’s honor in the beginning and he didn’t try to protect his brother from doing something as stupid as he wanted to do.

He has no part in this whole redemptive scheme.

Now you might think, “Wow,” he would celebrate. No. Verse 28, “He became angry.” The Pharisees and scribes just appeared in the story, the older brother is who they are in the story.

They were angry that God in Christ was embracing sinners.

That’s how it is with religious phonies and hypocrites, they don’t want to admit their sin. “I have been grinding this service for you to get the estate that I want. I never neglected a command. You never gave me a goat, let alone a calf, that I might be merry with my friends.” He wanted a party of his own, but not with the father and not with the brother, he had other friends. He had his own group, hypocrites hang with hypocrites.

What does it mean that Jesus is eating with tax-gatherers and sinners, the question now is: what does it mean that the Pharisees and scribes are NOT eating with them? What does it mean that the Pharisees and scribes are grumbling about Jesus’ eating with them?

This is passage for long-time churchgoers. This is a passage for people who don’t struggle as much with running from God as they struggle with condemning those who do.

The elder brother represents the Pharisees and scribes who are standing by suspiciously and condemningly, while Jesus is eating with tax-gatherers and sinners.

These words go straight to the heart of what Christianity is. It’s a right relationship to God as our Father through faith. If we get that wrong, all goes wrong. And it seems that the elder brother got it wrong.

How does he see himself and his father relating? As master and slave, not a father and a son.

Acts 17:25 says, God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, for he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. It dishonors God to treat him as a master in need of slave labor. What honors God is not slave labor, but childlike faith in his all-sufficiency.

What happens when we relate to God that way? Everything is distorted.

The Consequences Are Left Unmentioned

Jesus is entreating the Pharisees. He is entreating all of us. Sinners of the worldly kind and sinners of the religious kind. Come in from the foreign country of misery, and come in from the porch of hard-earned merit. Both are deadly. But inside is the banquet of grace, and forgiveness, and fellowship with an all-satisfying Father, and an inheritance unfading, undefiled, incorruptible, kept in heaven for all who live by faith in grace and not by earning merit.